Leisure

[Tobin S.]

I was dreaming about winning the lottery one day not too long ago, and it occurred to me that I don't really need a lot of money to survive. I'm doing fine on less than 50k a year. What I want is the freedom that having a lot of money allows a person. My ultimate dream is to live a life of leisure, not to possess a lot of stuff. It has been ever since I started working for a living when I was sixteen. It would be great to have a job that I love doing, but I haven't run across one of those yet.

So it came to me that I could not have leisure without freedom. That was my mantra for a few days as I thought it over: freedom and leisure, freedom and leisure, freedom and leisure. I then googled the two terms together and found that even though this idea came to me independently, it was not an original idea. It turns out that there is, or used to be, a whole branch of psychology known as leisure studies. I ran across a guy named John Neulinger who was a leading thinker in this area thirty years ago. I picked up a book written by him called To Leisure: An Introduction that was published in 1981. It is a very thought provoking work, but I don't think the book hit any best seller lists. It appears that there was only one printing as the book I bought is from the original printing. It cost me $1.80 plus shipping and I think it is one of the most important books I've ever read.

One of the main points Neulinger makes is that free time does not equal leisure. Free time is something like an object. It is something that you have. Leisure is a way of being. It is a state of mind. So it is possible to be in a leisurely state of mind while you are working. But pure leisure is when you have the freedom to enter into an activity with only intrinsic rewards as the goal. If you are doing something for only an extrinsic reward, you feel compelled to do that by outside forces and in Neulinger's view that is not true freedom. An example of leisure activity motivated by only intrinsic factors is me writing this post and conversing with you all about these ideas. I'm only doing this for my own pleasure and enlightenment.

Our society is very achievement oriented. It seems like if you are not constantly striving to be better and more successful, it is frowned upon. I've fallen into that work ethic trap my whole life. I've come to think of it now as the enemy of leisure and good mental health. As long time readers of the lounge know, I went through a time that ended a year ago where I worked the hardest I had ever worked in my life. I was going to school to finish my degree, taking three classes a semester including summer, and working fifty to sixty hours a week at my job. I did that for two and a half years. I had almost no freedom and leisure during that time period. I also put a lot of stress on my marriage and I felt sick in the head. I almost cried when I turned in my last assignment. It was a very emotional moment. It was like being set free after being a slave for two and a half years.

I am never doing that again. I feel like I'm thinking right about work, free time, and leisure for the first time in my life. My goal now is to maximize my leisure state of mind and therefore, I think, my overall well being. Work will still be there. You have to provide for the basics or else you have no freedom and leisure. Beyond that, I think it's time to take it easy.

[PasadenaTrudy]

1. Simply said...

you only live once, make time to notice and enjoy the small things (my mantra) The pressure cooker lifestyle is overrated, IMO.

[lunatica]

2. That's an amazing philosophy Tobin!

In the last year or so I've been giving myself permission to do exactly what I want. I decided that if I thought I 'should' do things that I need to question that kind of thinking. It's amazing how much difference it makes. There are a lot of little things that I don't do now because they were only 'shoulds' in my life. It's become a daily thing.

[Tobin S.]

3. You touch on another subject in the book.

Neulinger talks a lot about societal norms, that is, in many cases, the pressure to do those things that we think we should be doing, but in reality aren't necessary. Once we rid ourselves of a lot of that stuff, we create better conditions to experience leisure. But, as my wife says, those societal pressures are an easy trap to fall into. The thing that must be done to create a leisure society involve changing the very basis of our economy. We must move from a work ethic to a leisure ethic.

Neulinger was writing right before Reagan was unleashed on us. I don't think he foresaw the regressive policies that would follow and that we still haven't shaken ourselves from let alone recovered. We have had very little if any progress toward transforming to a leisure society in the last 35 years thanks in large part to Reagan.

[lunatica]

4. Don't underestimate difficult times

I think my recent search for freedom to do what I want is very much because of many years of financial difficulties and feeling very trapped in my circumstances. It might be the same for you. There comes a time when you ask yourself what the hell you're doing being stuck in unhappiness, worry and stress. The trick is to pay attention to yourself.

I think many people don't have enough faith in themselves to stop doing what keeps them incarcerated in the shoulds in their lives. If you really question them they tend to look pretty stupid.